Nevada OKs laws that open way for new Tesla battery factory
The Nevada legislature has passed a series of bills designed to lure Palo Alto-based Tesla Motors’ $5-billion battery factory to the northwest part of the state.
Late Thursday night, after a two-day special session in the state capitol of Carson City, Gov. Brian Sandoval signed them into law.
Sandoval, in a high-profile event held last week with Tesla Chairman and founder Elon Musk, asserted that the deal would result in $100 billion in revenue to Nevada over the next 20 years.
The deal includes $1.3 billion in tax breaks and other inducements but would bring the state needed jobs and investments. Tesla’s massive battery factory will employ 6,500 workers when it’s up and running, but construction of the factory will also require thousands of workers.
The new legislation includes bills that would give Tesla a discount on energy use; enable Tesla to sell its electric cars directly to consumers instead of through a network of franchised dealerships; take money from an insurance company tax credit and film production tax credits to help pay for the Tesla deal; and excuse Tesla from certain taxes for the first 10 years of the “gigafactory” operation.
Tesla has also agreed to guarantee that a certain number of the high-tech factory jobs, and a percentage of the construction jobs required to build it, go to Nevada workers.
The proposed factory, which Tesla will build and operate in partnership with Japanese electronics giant Panasonic, will be the largest lithium-ion battery factory in the world -- larger, Musk has said, than all the other lithium-ion battery factories combined.
It is to be built on a piece of industrial property in the Reno area, outside the town of Sparks. Construction began earlier this year, when the deal was still being hammered out, and will resume soon, Tesla has said.
When completed, it will produce batteries to drive sales of Tesla’s much-anticipated “mass market” electric automobile, the “Model 3” sedan the company has said it will be able to sell for under $40,000, or nearly half the base price for its popular $70,000 Model S vehicle.
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